Normal view

There are new articles available, click to refresh the page.
Today — 1 June 2024The Guardian

Borussia Dortmund v Real Madrid: Champions League final 2024 – live

1 June 2024 at 16:46

You’ll Never Walk Alone. It’s an anthem for Borussia Dortmund as well, and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most terrace-friendly ditty is currently ringing around Wembley. Up in the posh seats, the aforementioned Kloppo sings and sways in the emotional style. A pfenning for all of the conflicting thoughts running through the head of the former Liverpool boss right now. He looks healthy and happy and about ten years younger. Premier League management is a job of work all right.

Dortmund have Jurgen Klopp, so Real need a celebrity fan of their own in attendance. Step forward Jay-Z, who is at Wembley to support his Roc Nation Sports client Vinicius Júnior. In other news, the Wembley turf is looking lush, so while Jay-Z has 99 problems … no, you deserve better than that. I’m sorry for even thinking about it.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Observer

💾

© Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Observer

‘It’s only because of your son that my daughter’s living’: overcoming the cultural barriers to organ donation

Culturally and linguistically diverse communities account for just 15% of organ donations made in 2023, but advocates say the more diversity among donors the better

When doctors told Mili Udani there was nothing more they could do to treat her seven-year-old son Deyaan’s brain haemorrhage, her “world came crashing down”. Only a week earlier they had been enjoying a holiday to see family in Mumbai when he began complaining about headaches.

After three doctors declared Deyaan brain dead, Udani’s cousin asked her if she had thought about organ donation. The question suddenly brought back a memory from a few weeks earlier.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Nadir Kinani/The Guardian

💾

© Photograph: Nadir Kinani/The Guardian

Agony and the urge to pee: the growing evidence giving hope to chronic UTI sufferers

An Australian discovery has added weight to a long-held theory about the painful condition – but relief for most patients is still elusive

After enduring years of experimental and unhelpful treatments in Australia to treat her chronic urinary tract infections, Grace* took the drastic measure of flying to the UK to seek help for symptoms so painful she “could barely walk down the street”.

While common and uncomplicated cases of the infections, known as UTIs, are usually easily treated with a short course of antibiotics, this often does not work for chronic, recurring cases like Grace’s. Left untreated, UTIs can cause permanent kidney damage and life-threatening infections.

Continue reading...

💾

© Illustration: The Guardian

💾

© Illustration: The Guardian

The moment I knew: as two pythons writhed above us, I realised our lives would always be intertwined

1 June 2024 at 16:00

Roberto Meza Mont and Craig Ruddy had been together a decade when their relationship reached a crossroads. Then two brazen reptiles showed them the way forward

Craig and I locked eyes on a Sydney street a couple of days after the 2001 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. I was 23, new to Australia from Peru, and still shaking off the cobwebs of a conservative Catholic upbringing.

To me, Craig looked like someone from another planet: a lean, strong frame, curly beach-blond hair and a smile that seemed to light up the whole city. My English was basic but our shared sense of humour cut through the language barrier.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Victoria Harris

💾

© Photograph: Victoria Harris

Tricked or forced out of Australia: the vulnerable women at the centre of a hidden domestic violence crisis

1 June 2024 at 16:00

Migration advocates say women are being threatened with visa cancellation along with sexual, financial, physical and emotional abuse

Priya* hoped a short getaway to south-east Asia would repair her marriage.

It was planned after months of abuse and coercion at the hands of her husband – which began almost immediately after arriving in Australia – that became so bad she feared leaving their Melbourne home, she says.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Jasper James/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Jasper James/Getty Images

Toby Jones praises ‘extraordinary dignity’ of Post Office accused

1 June 2024 at 15:58

Actor, who played campaigner Alan Bates in TV drama, calls Horizon scandal a ‘Hitchcockian nightmare’ at Hay festival

The post office operators prosecuted in the Post Office Horizon scandal have “extraordinary dignity” after living 20 years in a “Hitchcockian nightmare”, according to actor Toby Jones.

Jones played Alan Bates, a former post office operator and leading campaigner for justice for staff wrongly blamed for accounting shortfalls caused by faulty software, in the ITV drama that put the scandal back in the spotlight.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: ITV/REX/Shutterstock

💾

© Photograph: ITV/REX/Shutterstock

Four more boys arrested on suspicion of rape in Nottinghamshire

By: PA Media
1 June 2024 at 15:36

Twelve-year-old among eight now bailed after attack on teenage girl reported in Newark on 25 May

Four more boys including a 12-year-old have been arrested on suspicion of the rape of a teenage girl in Newark.

Nottinghamshire police received a report that a teenage girl had been attacked on Yorke Drive playing fields, Nottinghamshire, between 5.30pm and 7pm on 25 May.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

💾

© Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

Julia Gillard says progress on gender equality is ‘really glacial’

1 June 2024 at 15:03

Former Australian prime minister issues warning that young men’s thinking on the issue is going backward

Former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard has said global progress on gender equality is “really glacial and slow” as she warned that it is going backwards among young people.

Gillard cited recent polling by King’s College London’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, which showed that 51% of respondents believe that men are doing too much to support gender equality, while 46% think that men are now discriminated against.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Labor Party

💾

© Photograph: Labor Party

Woman who killed pensioner in queue row in Welwyn Garden City sentenced

1 June 2024 at 15:01

Myra Coutinho-Lopez, 82, who had dementia became confused at bank counter, leading to altercation with Courtney Richman, 26

A 26-year-old woman who killed an elderly pensioner with dementia during a row over a long queue at a bank has been given a suspended sentence.

Courtney Richman had been waiting behind 82-year-old Myra Coutinho-Lopez when the argument began on 6 December 2021 at a branch in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, a court heard.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Family/Hertfordshire police

💾

© Photograph: Family/Hertfordshire police

Bad vibes and VAR: waiting game leaves fans frustrated over marginal calls | Jonathan Wilson

1 June 2024 at 15:00

With a vote on the technology looming, it’s debatable that the search for accuracy is worth the sacrifice of spontaneity

On Thursday, Premier League clubs will vote on Wolves’ proposal to scrap video assistant referees. The motion will almost certainly not achieve majority support, never mind secure the 14 votes out of 20 needed for it to pass. But what it may do is to shift the Overton window and lead to a serious review of VAR, an assessment of where it works and where it doesn’t. And that is something that is long overdue.

Consultation is unfashionable in the modern world. Politicians of all stripes act too often in effect by fiat, and that is as true in football as anything else. VAR was imposed for the 2018 World Cup with minimal research or conversation and accepted almost everywhere without anybody really investigating the consequences.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Carl Recine/Reuters

💾

© Photograph: Carl Recine/Reuters

Sunak suffers poll blow as levelling-up cash-for-votes row erupts

New poll gives Labour its biggest lead since Liz Truss meltdown as ‘Tory towns’ gain most from new funds

The Tory general election campaign hit more trouble on Saturday as Rishi Sunak faced accusations of using levelling up funds to win votes and Labour opened its biggest poll lead since the disastrous premiership of Liz Truss.

As Sunak tried to fire up his ­party’s campaign before the first crucial TV debate with Keir Starmer on Tuesday, it emerged that more than half of the 30 towns each promised £20m of regeneration funding on Saturday were in constituencies won by Tory MPs at the last election.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Carl Court/AP

💾

© Photograph: Carl Court/AP

Chad Daybell sentenced to death for murders of his wife and his girlfriend’s children

1 June 2024 at 14:44

Idaho case marked by Daybell and girlfriend Lori Vallow Daybell’s extremist religious beliefs about doomsday

Chad Daybell was sentenced to death Saturday for the murders of his wife and his girlfriend’s two youngest children in Idaho in a case marked by his and his girlfriend’s extremist religious beliefs about doomsday.

The sentence was handed down after an Idaho jury unanimously agreed that imposing the death penalty would be a just resolution to the triple-murder case. The sentence marks the end of a grim investigation that began with a search for two missing children in 2019. The next year, their bodies were found buried in Daybell’s eastern Idaho yard.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Kyle Green/AP

💾

© Photograph: Kyle Green/AP

Doctor Who: Dot and Bubble – season one episode five recap

1 June 2024 at 14:35

Russell T Davies channels Black Mirror in a story of AI, shallow social media, and posh white supremacy. But, naturally, with added slug monsters

“Oh my hopscotch!”, as Lindy Pepper-Bean might say. The on-screen lead for much of this episode, Callie Cooke, is surely one of the most dislikeable human characters Doctor Who has ever produced. She is vain, shallow, self-absorbed and manipulative, and not afraid to cause her idol, Ricky September (Tom Rhys Harries), to die, and then lie about it. Regardless of the presence of the slug monsters, she is undoubtedly the villain of the piece.

It was strikingly stylised, and unusual to see an episode of Doctor Who mostly colour-graded to be pastel pinks and blues until the final subterranean act. The obvious target was the vacuousness of much of social media, but writer Russell T Davies struck out at wider themes, including the idea that AI might come to hate humans, and the arrogant privilege that comes with being, as Ruby Sunday put it, the “rich kids”. The inhabitants of Finetime had been sent off to a posh offworld boarding school and apprentice scheme for the wealthy and conventionally attractive, where they mostly partied. “Some of us get eaten” was both factually true for the story, and a bleakly observant pun for the viewer. Some people do get Eton.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: James Pardon/BBC Studios/Bad Wolf

💾

© Photograph: James Pardon/BBC Studios/Bad Wolf

‘The first TikTok election’: are Sunak and Starmer’s digital campaigns winning over voters?

The Tories and Labour are forking out more than ever on social media ads, but going viral isn’t easy. We speak to influencers and strategists about the messages and memes

Why would you hold an election in November? The question came from digital marketing guru Mike Harris and was asked in a message to his friend, Labour’s campaign manager, Morgan McSweeney, earlier this year. Digital advertising is more expensive in October and November because the internet is swamped with ads for Christmas and Black Friday, said Harris, the founder of communications agency 89up. Why not pick a cheaper time of year?

McSweeney shot back: “How about June?”

Continue reading...

💾

© Illustration: Observer Design

💾

© Illustration: Observer Design

The Observer view on Donald Trump: utterly unfit for office, he should quit the race for the White House

1 June 2024 at 14:15

Teflon Don has become Felon Don, but the US constitution has no objection to him holding the highest office

It was the moment America, or at least America’s politicians and media, had been waiting for. It was the day justice finally caught up with Donald Trump. The former president’s manipulation of the 2016 election, by hushing up a sex scandal that threatened his chances, and his attempts to discredit a criminal justice system intent on punishing him, was famously thwarted. It was an all-time presidential and judicial first, a historic result that transformed Teflon Don into Felon Don, thanks to a jury of 12 ordinary men and women and a brave prosecutor, Alvin Bragg.

Looked at another way, however, last week’s much anticipated dramatic denouement of the criminal trial of the New York playboy, billionaire and presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate may turn out to be less pivotal than anticipated. According to the US networks, most Americans tuned out weeks ago, not least because cameras were barred from the Manhattan courtroom. One not untypical public survey found that 67% of respondents said a conviction would make no difference to how they voted this autumn. The 34 guilty verdicts were an overnight sensation. But they may not significantly shift the political dial.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: John Nacion/REX/Shutterstock

💾

© Photograph: John Nacion/REX/Shutterstock

Fired-up Bairstow can add Caribbean twist to England’s World Cup defence

1 June 2024 at 14:11

Campaign starts against Scotland with the Yorkshireman set to play an influential role in ensuring team hit all the right notes

But for a slip on the golf course, a cruel twist of fate that led to a cruel twist of a left ankle and a pretty sickening compound fracture, Jonny Bairstow might well be a fifth member of the England squad with two white-ball World Cup winners medals. As it is, the Yorkshireman goes into this T20 World Cup defence still looking to add to the 50-over title he was so central to back in 2019.

Slated to open in Australia two years ago, only for that incident on the tee to offer Alex Hales a route back in, Bairstow has now been repurposed as a firebrand No 4 after the peppy arrivals of Phil Salt and Will Jacks alongside Jos Buttler in the top three.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Philip Brown/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Philip Brown/Getty Images

Police investigate theft of more than 200 Pride flags in Massachusetts

By: Maya Yang
1 June 2024 at 14:08

Flags were stolen overnight from prominent local traffic circle in Carlisle amid wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in US

Police are investigating the theft of more than 200 Pride flags in Carlisle, Massachusetts, that occurred just before Pride month – and amid a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ measures from US legislatures.

In a statement released on Friday, the Carlisle police department announced that it is investigating the theft of the flags, which were taken out of a prominent local traffic circle earlier in the week.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle/Getty Images

Modi’s alliance to win easily in India election, exit polls project

1 June 2024 at 13:41

Prime minister claims victory but opposition dismisses poll results as fixed and unscientific

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP)-led alliance is projected to win a big majority in the general election that concluded on Saturday, TV exit polls said, suggesting it would do better than expected by most analysts.

Most exit polls projected the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) could win a two-thirds majority in the 543-member lower house of parliament, where 272 is needed for a simple majority. A two-thirds majority will allow the government to usher in far-reaching amendments to the constitution.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Debajyoti Chakraborty/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

💾

© Photograph: Debajyoti Chakraborty/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

Love him or loathe him, James Corden is back in the UK. So will the sniping now stop?

1 June 2024 at 13:41

After massive TV success in the US, the creator of Gavin & Stacey is about to appear on the London stage. But why do British audiences find him so hard to love?

James Corden is back in the UK and characteristically busy. Last year, the 45-year-old left his job as Los Angeles-based chat show host of The Late Late Show on CBS. A Christmas special is planned for Gavin & Stacey, the acclaimed BBC sitcom he created with co-star Ruth Jones. There’s talk of reviving One Man, Two Guvnors, the National Theatre’s critically lauded hit ­comedy that transferred to Broadway, winning Corden a Tony award in 2012.

And later this month, Corden will appear at London’s Old Vic in a short run of Joe Penhall’s new play, The Constituent, helmed by the ­theatre’s artistic director, Matthew Warchus. Corden’s first stage role since One Man, Two Guvnors, it’s seen as ­something of a departure (a gamble) for Corden – a serious work about the escalating risks of public service in politics.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: NBC/Nathan Congleton/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: NBC/Nathan Congleton/Getty Images

Sabalenka and Badosa friendship a sign of shifting dynamics on WTA tour

French Open match ended in an embrace, reflecting a wider trend in what was once a tensely competitive locker room

As Aryna Sabalenka and Paula Badosa stood by the player entrance to Court Philippe-Chatrier in anticipation of their French Open third-round match, they waited in perfect silence. There were no jokes exchanged and no small talk. This was business. The pair entered the court and put on a show, battling hard until the end.

Away from their numerous on-court battles, which have included three matches in the last three months, Sabalenka and Badosa refer to each other as best friends. It was not until the Tie Break Tens exhibition event before Indian Wells in 2022, while both players were ranked inside the top 10, that they connected. While they are hardly the first friends to compete on the court, their relationship seems reflective of the shifting dynamics in the WTA locker room.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Robert Prange/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Robert Prange/Getty Images

Minnesota Democrat Dean Phillips calls on New York governor to pardon Trump

US representative and failed contender for president says Kathy Hochul should grant pardon ‘for the good of the country’

The outgoing Democratic US representative who failed in his presidential primary challenge against Joe Biden called on the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, to pardon Donald Trump over his criminal conviction for hush-money payments to influence the 2016 election “for the good of the country”.

Minnesota representative Dean Phillips, who was the first Democrat to call on fellow party member Henry Cuellar to resign following bribery charges against the Texas representative, urged for the pardon on Friday in a post on X.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP

💾

© Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP

Rose Tremain: ‘Sex scenes are like arias in opera. They have to move the story forwards’

1 June 2024 at 13:00

The bestselling author on how to avoid reader indifference, the advantage of writing historical stories and why she returns to Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates again and again

Rose Tremain, 80, published her first novel in 1976 and has gone on to become one of her generation’s most admired talents, garnering numerous literary accolades along with a damehood in 2020. Her 17th novel, Absolutely and Forever, is a slender yet profound coming-of-age story whose heroine, Marianne, is raised in the home counties in the 1950s. When she meets floppy haired, artistic Simon, fateful consequences are set to accompany a potent sexual awakening. Tremain lives in Norfolk with her husband, the biographer Richard Holmes.

How did Absolutely and Forever begin for you?
I have for years been haunted by the life and destiny of a close, very beautiful school friend, who fell in love aged 15 and thought she saw the map of her future before she was hardly older than Shakespeare’s Juliet. And then that future was snatched away. The idea that a whole life can be determined by a catastrophe that happens in early youth is both fascinating and tragic. The story of Absolutely and Forever changes the shape of the original and Marianne is more like me than my beautiful friend, but it has its roots in her story.

Absolutely and Forever by Rose Tremain is published in paperback by Vintage (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Ali Smith/The Observer

💾

© Photograph: Ali Smith/The Observer

Filthy lucre is everywhere, but book festivals are an easy target for protesters’ fury | Martha Gill

1 June 2024 at 13:00

Hay and Edinburgh forgo pragmatism in turning their backs on the Baillie Gifford fund

How gratifying to chuck dirty money back in the face of a would-be benefactor. Such moments mark literature. Pip refusing funds from Magwitch, a convict. Will Ladislaw disdaining the charity of George Eliot’s corrupted Bulstrode. The statement is this: scruples do not belong only to the rich. There is a price at which I, too, cannot be bought.

And yet. In these great works of fiction, tensions are drawn out, questions raised. Ladislaw accepts support from another flawed man, Casaubon, of whom he disapproves. Hypocrisy? Or the observation that in a hard world pragmatism has its place – that beggars can be choosers only on occasion? And is Pip right to cast away the reformed and grateful Magwitch? Are all paths to atonement thus to be closed?

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Steven May/Alamy

💾

© Photograph: Steven May/Alamy

Chris Riddell on Donald Trump trying, and failing, to fill Abraham Lincoln’s boots – cartoon

1 June 2024 at 13:00

The former US president, convicted on 34 counts, pales into insignificance beside the former great

You can order your own copy of this cartoon

Continue reading...

💾

© Illustration: Chris Riddell/The Observer

💾

© Illustration: Chris Riddell/The Observer

‘Once in a lifetime’: UK and European space scientists urged to join Nasa mission to Uranus

1 June 2024 at 12:44

Astrophysicists call for international cooperation on ambitious probe, amid growing interest in the mysterious planet

European space scientists have been urged to join forces with Nasa to ensure the success of one of the most ambitious space missions planned for launch this century.

Joining a robot spaceflight to the mysterious planet Uranus would offer “the opportunity to participate in a groundbreaking, flagship-class mission”, astrophysicists have said.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images

Bath set up Premiership final with Northampton by seeing off Sale

  • Playoff semi-final: Bath 31-23 Sale
  • Annett’s late try helps secure Twickenham trip

Bath are into the Premiership final for the first time in nine years but they are not a team who give their supporters an easy ride. At times it was Sale who looked the side most likely to meet Northampton at Twickenham next Saturday, only for a 74th-minute try from Niall Annett and 16 points from the boot of Finn Russell to keep Bath on track for the promised land.

Maybe it was the nerves associated with such a big occasion but not until the closing couple of minutes could home fans remotely relax. It is 28 years since their favourites were last crowned champions of England and the huge outpouring of joy at the final whistle showed exactly what this result meant to everyone connected with the club.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: David Rogers/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: David Rogers/Getty Images

Domestic abuse drove our daughters to suicide, say families. So what stops coroners acknowledging that?

1 June 2024 at 12:22

As the number of abuse victims in England and Wales taking their own lives rises, pressure is mounting on coroners to acknowledge the role violence, control and coercion can play

Roisin, the only child of Dr Tony Bennett and Margaret Hunter, went to her bedroom in Darlington on 7 March 2022 and attempted to take her own life. She died in hospital nine days later, at the age of 19.

Roisin, known as “Roi”, excelled at sports; she was popular and had received high marks as one of the youngest students to study for ­dispensing optician exams. She had no record of self-harming, ­mental illness or attempted suicide. Her ambition was to go to university and qualify as an optician. Roisin had a warm, supportive family. So what prompted her to take her own life?

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Farknot_Architect/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Farknot_Architect/Getty Images

Being a politician was ‘very yucky’, ex-MP Rory Stewart tells Hay audience

1 June 2024 at 12:17

Former Tory minister admits at festival that he felt a fraud due to need to give the impression he was in three places at once

Former Conservative MP Rory Stewart found being a politician “very yucky” and felt like a fraud, he told an audience at Hay festival on Saturday.

Asked whether he would consider going back into politics, he said that he found being a politician “personally very, very unpleasant” and “didn’t like it”, adding: “I feel like a fraud all the time, in a whole series of ways.”

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Steven May/Alamy Live News/Alamy Live News.

💾

© Photograph: Steven May/Alamy Live News/Alamy Live News.

Record number of NHS mental health patients kept in hospitals longer than necessary

1 June 2024 at 12:00

Lack of care and support leaves patients stranded on units when they are clinically ready to be discharged

The number of patients stuck in NHS mental health units in England despite being clinically ready to leave has reached its highest level in at least eight years.

“Delayed discharges” of patients from hospitals in NHS mental health trusts reached 49,677 days in March, according to an analysis – a higher figure than in any month since at least January 2016, when NHS Digital started publishing the data.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: kieferpix/Getty Images/iStockphoto

💾

© Photograph: kieferpix/Getty Images/iStockphoto

‘He had a sarcastic turn of phrase’: discovery of 1509 book sheds new light on ‘father of utilitarianism’

1 June 2024 at 12:00

Unearthed notes owned by the renowned philosopher Jeremy Bentham reveals the roots of his influential ethics

One of the dangerous “fools” caricatured in a medieval printed satire called Ship of Fools is the Foolish Reader. He is shown in an illustration surrounded by his many learned volumes, but he doesn’t read any of them. This idiot, depicted with many others, including a Feasting Fool, a Preaching Fool and a Procrastinating Fool, was a warning to the wise by the German author Sebastian Brandt 530 years ago.

Now research at a London university has unearthed a rare English 1509 copy of this book once owned by the renowned English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. And the 1494 satirical allegory, which pokes fun at various kinds of public folly, sheds new light on Bentham’s influential ethics.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

💾

© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Europe must splash the cash (and seize it) to save 2024

1 June 2024 at 12:00

There is still an expensive war to fight, and if EU and UK politicians insist on using taxpayer funds for it, there will be little left to spend on public services

There were hopes that 2024 would be a good year. Economists talked of a soft landing, by which they meant a solid rebound from last year’s high-inflation, high-interest shock. A drop in inflation would spark cuts to the cost of borrowing while trade expanded, unemployment stayed low, and household disposable incomes increased.

This cheerful scenario was going to be played out across Europe and allow the EU and UK to pursue many of the goals, not least tackling climate change, that were delayed as ministers sought to protect business and household finances from the fallout from the pandemic and the Ukraine war.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

💾

© Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

A century after his death, Kafka still sums up our surreal world | Rachel Cooke

1 June 2024 at 12:00

A sneak preview of a new exhibition about him sends shivers down my spine

Tomorrow, it will be 100 years since the writer Franz Kafka died in a sanatorium near Vienna from tuberculosis – and the good news is that as major literary anniversaries go, this one is easy to mark. You could, for instance, simply read him: a short story, perhaps, or a few pages of Ross Benjamin’s new, uncensored translation of his diaries. If you’re in Oxford, where his papers are in the Bodleian Library, you can see a new exhibition about him, and gawp at his sputum jar and a syringe of the type with which those treating him used to inject cocaine directly into his larynx; you might also wander in the city’s University Parks, where a giant inflatable “Jitterbug” – like Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis, it is half man and half insect – has appeared, as if from outer space.

Or you could just go about your regular life, and wait for the K-word – Kafkaesque – to float, unbidden, into your mind. The newspapers or the BBC will probably deliver at breakfast time, but if for some reason they don’t, there must be a bill you need to query, some kind of rebate you’re owed. Personally, I find that battling with the council over its stupid exercises in confirmation bias – questionnaires about low-traffic zones that permit only one “correct” answer – is good for reaffirming my sense that faceless, slightly sinister bureaucracy is indeed all around. But there are also a growing number of friends I can text, the better to find out how their David-and-Goliath office struggles are going. Oh, the glorious word soup that spouts endlessly from the mouths of HR departments!

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Kafka2024

💾

© Photograph: Kafka2024

The week in audio: You’ll Never Beat Kyle Walker; The Artificial Human; The Case of the Tiny Suit/Case; The Beauty of Everyday Things – review

1 June 2024 at 12:00

The Man City captain turns to podcasting; Radio 4 gets deep on AI; into the woods with the team behind Who Shat on the Floor at My Wedding; and poet Ian McMillan hymns the mundane

You’ll Never Beat Kyle Walker | BBC Sounds
The Artificial Human (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
The Case of the Tiny Suit/Case
The Beauty of Everyday Things (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds

Launching a football podcast at the end of the season is a plucky move. You might have the balls to do so, as it were, if you captained a team who’d just won the Premier League title four times on the trot, and were expected to win the FA Cup just before your show’s premiere.

Balls indeed. You’ll Never Beat Kyle Walker arrived on BBC Sounds four days after his club, Manchester City, lost to Manchester United in a game described by the Guardian’s chief sports writer, Barney Ronay, as “a hungover performance”. This fact is conveniently left unsaid by podcast presenter Chris Hughes, the chirpy former Love Island contestant turned serial BBC sports host. Instead, Walker is called captain of the European champions, which he was on Wednesday, but isn’t now (this year’s Champions League final, between Dortmund and Real Madrid, is tonight). “The boffins at the BBC have spent months talking about what we could do in his series,” Hughes continues, laddishly, “but in the end, all we wanted to do was talk football and take the listeners inside the life of a serial winner.”

Continue reading...

💾

© Composite: Matt McNulty - The FA/The FA via Getty Images

💾

© Composite: Matt McNulty - The FA/The FA via Getty Images

Portrait cards that sparked a Victorian collecting craze – in pictures

1 June 2024 at 12:00

After discovering an album of Victorian cartes de visite in an antiques market, Paul Frecker gave up his day job to become a dealer in vintage photographs. Now collected in a new book, these cards were “a photographic craze that seized the imagination of the British public at the beginning of the 1860s,” says the Scotland-based author. “Queen Victoria was one of the format’s biggest fans.” Initially a way of distributing family portraits to friends, the phenomenon soon extended to images of royals, celebrities and larger-than-life characters. “It really was a fervour: crowds often formed to ogle displays in stockists’ windows, to the extent that pavements were blocked and traffic was impeded.”

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: All images courtesy of Paul Frecker

💾

© Photograph: All images courtesy of Paul Frecker

City Of Troy back off the ropes to win Derby No 10 for believer Aidan O’Brien

1 June 2024 at 11:49
  • Trainer always had faith his Guineas flop could come good
  • Well-backed Ambiente Friendly comes home as runner-up

It is one of the oldest dictums in racing that you should always forgive a good horse for one bad race, and it paid a rich dividend for favourite-backers at Epsom as Aidan O’Brien’s City Of Troy, beaten out of sight in the 2,000 Guineas last month, rediscovered his exceptional juvenile form to run out a convincing two-and-three-quarter-length winner of the 245th Derby.

“To be honest, it wasn’t very ­exciting,” Ryan Moore, City Of Troy’s jockey, said, but the punters who kept faith with the 3-1 shot after his flop at Newmarket would surely beg to ­differ. There was a very early drama as Voyage, the least experienced runner in the field, unshipped Pat Dobbs just after the start, and the loose horse soon worked his way to the front of the field.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: John Walton/PA

💾

© Photograph: John Walton/PA

More than 2,000 officers police protests and Champions League final in London

1 June 2024 at 11:40

Forces outside the capital drawn on for Borussia Dortmund v Real Madrid match and a Tommy Robinson march and counter-protest

More than 2,000 officers have been deployed across London, including more than 400 from outside the capital, to police the Champions League final, a protest by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson and a counter-demonstration.

The final between Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid takes place at Wembley on Saturday evening. And, earlier, a protest organised by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, more commonly known as Tommy Robinson, set off from the Victoria area on Saturday, ending up in Parliament Square where speeches took place.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Matt McNulty/UEFA/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Matt McNulty/UEFA/Getty Images

British kayaker who went missing found dead in Swiss lake

1 June 2024 at 11:35

Family and friends pay tribute to British record-holder Bren Orton, 29, who disappeared in the Melezza River

A British man who went missing while kayaking in Switzerland has been found dead, Swiss police have confirmed.

Bren Orton, 29, went missing on 16 May. Authorities searched for the professional kayaker for two weeks before a body was discovered in Lake Maggiore, which straddles Switzerland and Italy. His body was discovered by a sailor who contacted emergency services.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: bren.orton/Instagram

💾

© Photograph: bren.orton/Instagram

Seoul warns public of more balloons being sent from North Korea

By: Agencies
1 June 2024 at 11:23

A city-wide message asks people not to touch the balloons and leave them for military to handle

Seoul warned the public on Saturday to avoid more balloons sent from North Korea and to report them to the military or police.

South Korea’s military said North Korea was sending more balloons carrying “filth” across the heavily fortified border.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: AP

💾

© Photograph: AP

South Africa to embark on new political path after ANC loses majority

After 30 years in power, the African National Congress, which took 40.2% of the vote, must engage in tricky coalition talks with rivals

The African National Congress’s (ANC) three decades of political dominance in South Africa has come to an end after it was announced that it had won just 40.2% of the vote in last week’s general election.

The ANC’s dramatic decline – the first time it has failed to win a majority of the votes since Nelson Mandela led it to victory in the first democratic election in 1994 – will lead to a chaotic round of coalition negotiations, with all of its potential partners posing difficulties.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

💾

© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

‘I miss my solitude’: Booker winner Paul Lynch says he is a ‘social introvert’

1 June 2024 at 11:14

Author of novel Prophet Song about an imagined fascist Ireland tells Hay audience he is not a political writer

“I miss my solitude,” last year’s Booker prize winner Paul Lynch told an audience at Hay festival on Saturday.

“In many ways I didn’t sign up for this. I’m an introvert who’s learned how to be social, a social introvert,” he said. “I signed up to sit in a room on my own for three or four years and write a book,” he said.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Tristan Hutchinson/The Observer

💾

© Photograph: Tristan Hutchinson/The Observer

Starmer must introduce wealth tax after Labour wins election, top Blair aide says

1 June 2024 at 11:00

Senior adviser who worked for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown says there is an ‘urgent imperative’ for a new government to address wealth inequality in Britain

A key New Labour adviser who worked for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in Downing Street says there is an “overwhelming economic and ethical case” for Keir Starmer’s party to impose higher taxes on wealth if it wins the general election.

Writing in the Observer Patrick Diamond, professor of public policy at Queen Mary University of London, and his colleague Colm Murphy, a lecturer in British politics, say a Labour government will need to look at radical ways to raise money, not least because the plans for higher economic growth that the party is relying on may never materialise.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Getty Images

Why Labour must adopt radical new tax policies | Colm Murphy and Patrick Diamond

The Brown-era adage ‘Prudence with a purpose’ could be the way to obtain the economic stability that has eluded every UK government since the 2008 financial crisis

Keir Starmer appears destined for Downing Street. Even so, as the election campaign rumbles on, his party will be challenged to articulate a compelling platform that secures not only the keys to Number 10 but also the economic stability that has eluded every UK government since the 2008 financial crisis. That will demand fiscal discipline delivered not only through a prudent approach to public spending but also fundamental reform of our tax system.

In headline policy, Labour is committed to fiscal rules on spending and debt. Rachel Reeves promises to move towards balanced current spending and to secure a falling debt-to-GDP ratio by the fifth year of the forecast. As her speech on Tuesday argues, Labour believes such rules will underpin “stability” and “growth”.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/the Observer

💾

© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/the Observer

Who can afford the expensive gamble of going to see a play that you might not like?

1 June 2024 at 11:00

It’s a shame the cost of theatre tickets is out of the reach for so many people. Cinema is the cheaper option

A friend started working at the fancy cinema chain Everyman. One of his perks is that he gets free tickets, which can cost over £20 each.

I’ve never been, but apparently it’s a luxury experience: comfy chairs, food and drinks delivered to your seat. Still, £20 feels steep. There are London cinemas where a ticket costs less than a tenner. And surely the point of going to the cinema is to enjoy the film itself rather than the experience of watching it? But when I think about theatre tickets, my complaints dissolve. Some plays charge over £200 for a seat: £20 seems like peanuts.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Wavebreakmedia/Getty Images/iStockphoto

💾

© Photograph: Wavebreakmedia/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Sure, Google’s AI overviews could be useful – if you like eating rocks | John Naughton

1 June 2024 at 11:00

The company that shaped the development of search engines is banking on chatbot-style summaries. But so far, its suggestions are pretty wild

Once upon a time, Google was great. For those who were online in 1998, history’s timeline bifurcated into two eras: BG (Before Google), and AG. It was elegant and clean: elegant because it was driven by a semi-objective algorithm called PageRank, which ranked websites according to how many other websites linked to them; and clean because it had no advertising, which of course also meant that it had no business model and accordingly was burning its way through its investors’ money.

It was too good to last, and of course it didn’t. Two of its biggest investors showed up one day, demanding a return on their investments. The company’s co-founders had an idea. One of the reasons theirs was such a good search engine was that they intensively monitored what people searched for, and then used that information continually to improve the engine’s performance. Their big idea was that the information thus derived had a commercial value; it indicated what people were interested in and might therefore be of value to advertisers who wanted to sell them stuff. Thus was born what Shoshana Zuboff christened “surveillance capitalism”, the dominant money machine of the networked world.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Thomas Jackson/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Thomas Jackson/Getty Images

James Cleverly suggests asylum seekers are lying about being suicidal

1 June 2024 at 10:49

Human rights charities condemn home secretary’s comments about MDP Wethersfield and say the site is ‘acutely harmful’

Human rights campaigners have criticised the home secretary for suggesting that asylum seekers at a controversial mass accommodation site are lying about being suicidal in the hope of being moved off the former military base.

ITV News on Friday night reported on a “severe mental health crisis” at Wethersfield in Essex, with many incidents of suicide and self-harm including five to 10 suicide attempts and 10 of self-harm in January this year alone – the highest level since the site opened.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

💾

© Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhône returns to Arles for the first time in 136 years

1 June 2024 at 10:45

The painting is on loan for an exhibition that opens this weekend in the Provençal city where the painter became obsessed with the night sky and eventually descended into madness

In September 1888, shortly before he descended into the madness that led him to cut off part of his left ear, Vincent van Gogh completed one of his early starry night paintings. Fascinated by astronomy and the solar system, the insomniac painter had obsessed over the work in his mind, asking a fellow painter: “When shall I ever paint the starry sky, this painting that keeps ­haunting me?”

Now the scene he finally captured, Starry Night over the Rhône, has been returned to Arles, where he painted it, for the first time in 136 years.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais

💾

© Photograph: Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais

Whether the vote goes red or blue, baby boomers will be the winners | Philip Inman

Both Labour and Conservative are pledging to look after the older voter while Gen Z is being ignored

Baby boomers are being courted with financial inducements from both main political parties. Millennials and Gen Z, not so much. Here we assess the intergenerational impact of the election so far.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: fotoVoyager/Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: fotoVoyager/Getty Images

‘She just says blah blah’: why Italy’s downtrodden believe Meloni is doing nothing for them

The PM is talking up her underdog credentials ahead of this week’s European elections. But many in an impoverished Rome neighbourhood are sceptical

Sitting in the dark, cramped dining room of her home in Tor Bella Monaca, a densely populated council estate on the outskirts of Rome, Giovanna has just returned from one of several cleaning jobs the 70-year-old does to keep her family afloat. Her husband works on construction sites intermittently. The couple, whose youngest son, Cristian, 26, lives at home, might be depicted as borgatara, a slur in Roman dialect that, loosely translated, means a poor person living on the socially deprived fringes of the Italian capital.

Referring to her own upbringing in Garbatella, a traditionally working-class district within easy reach of Rome’s famed monuments, the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni said earlier this month she was “a proud borgatara”.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Tiziana Fabi/AFP, Getty Images

💾

© Photograph: Tiziana Fabi/AFP, Getty Images

Young Woman and the Sea review – handsome if formulaic 1920s swimming biopic

By: Wendy Ide
1 June 2024 at 10:00

Daisy Ridley stars in the true-life tale of Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the Channel, in a drama that stretches the truth somewhat

You wait years for a stirring feminist true-life endurance swimming drama, then two come along within 12 months of each other. Young Woman and the Sea stars Daisy Ridley as Gertrude (Trudy) Ederle, the plucky butcher’s daughter from New York who, in 1926, became the first woman to swim the Channel. It follows Nyad, starring Annette Bening as Diana Nyad, who in 2013 swam from Cuba to Florida at the age of 64.

What we learn from watching both in relatively quick succession is that there are only so many ways that directors can inject tension into the inherently monotonous act of ploughing through the ocean for hours on end. Jellyfish peril figures prominently in both films, as does unprocessed childhood trauma. In the case of Ederle, a close brush with death as a young child battling measles means that she was subsequently treated as the runt of the family, and later her all-girl swimming team.

In UK and Irish cinemas now

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Disney

💾

© Photograph: Disney

❌
❌